In 2016, the worldwide semiconductor industry stated that Moore’s law, the principle that has powered the information-technology revolution since the 1960’s, is nearing its end. The entire industry roadmap was redrawn to what might be called the More than Moore strategy: rather than racing for the smallest possible feature size, the industry now focuses on the end application, where the goal is to produce larger objects (μm-cm range), but with small feature sizes, at the nanometric level (Fig.1). Beyond the ability to manufacture at these dimensions, this shift in paradigm unlocks novel prototyping needs, for new products. Freedom to design novel structures, on new substrates, with different materials is a key part to provide these new products. However, the technologies providing solutions for these new needs are not available for the industry.
This technological gap is not specific to the semiconductor industry. Molecular diagnosis industry (lab-on-chip, point of use...) is looking for technologies able to increase precision and detection rate in compact and portable devices. This improvement can only be made possible with more complex microfluidic devices, eventually patterned at the nanoscale. MicroLED industry is seeking the miniaturization of LED to improve screen resolution of new products. Augmented and virtual reality are currently one of the R&D drivers of this market, as they both are very dependent on high resolution. In summary, the need is for miniaturizing manufacturing to an unprecedented level of versatility and agility, to address the continuous evolution of R&D in these markets.
This project emerged from the NANOSOFT ERC project, while working on the nanomanipulation of nanotubes and nanopipettes. Carrying out confined rheology measurements, this work naturally lead to the understanding of flow in these confined spaces, This, combined with the longstanding AFM knowledge in our group, set up the way to the use of nanopipettes as fountain pens and control the deposition through oscillation.
NanoPrint is a direct Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique, offering resolutions down to a few tens of nanometers in width and a few nanometers in height, bridging the manufacturing gap exposed. It is not material specific, as any ink can be deposited, minding some adjustments in the printing parameters (colloidal metals, polymers, sensitive biological material). As it is a direct printing technique, shearing phenomenon can induce interesting and exploitable deposition behavior. Another major advantage of this solution is the non-alteration of the ink by an external energy source (UV, laser...). Inspired by AFM, NanoPrint provides a nanometric manufacturing technology with unprecedented versatility and resolution. As opposed to conventional AFM techniques, our method uses a macroscopic resonator (tuning fork) allowing us to attach a larger capillary, without excessively disturbing the oscillation properties, that are crucial for the deposition.
